Walter Felsenstein

Felsenstein, Walter

Born May 30, 1901, in Vienna; died Oct. 8, 1975, in Berlin. Stage director and actor of Austrian descent.

Felsenstein first worked as an actor and director in various theaters in Germany in 1923. From 1927 to 1932 and from 1938 to 1940 he worked in Switzerland. His production of J. Strauss’ operetta Die Fledermaus in Frankfurt, Germany, enjoyed great success. Felsenstein directed a number of productions in Zurich, including R. Strauss’ opera Salomé, under the composer’s supervision. In 1947 he became head of the Komische Oper, which he founded in East Berlin; he directed more than 25 productions in this theater.

Felsenstein, a leading innovator in opera, sought to integrate music and stage action. His reforms, based on the introduction of stage realism, were similar to K. S. Stanislavsky’s principles of directing opera. Wide acclaim was won by his stagings of Bizet’s Carmen (also staged in 1969 in the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater in Moscow), Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges, and Verdi’s Otello.

Felsenstein became a member of the German Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1951 and vice-president in 1956. He was made an honorary doctor of Humboldt University of Berlin in 1961 and of Charles University in Prague in 1962. He frequently toured the USSR with the Komische Oper. Felsenstein was awarded the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic in 1950, 1951, 1956, 1960, and 1970.

For plenty of understandable reasons, Janaeek's seventh opera enjoys the favour of record labels and DVD producers, hence those interested can choose from among four recordings, with the previous three starting with the legendary 1965 archive recording of a performance at the Komische Oper Berlin, directed by Walter Felsenstein and conducted by Vaclay Neumann (Arthaus), through the 1995 recording of the outstanding production at the Opera national de Paris explored by Sir Charles Mackerras (Arthaus) to the animated film of the opera with Kent Nagano as music director (Opus Arte).

Yet on Friday 24 June 2011 and in the five subsequent performances (my review is of the 26 June performance) the Smetana opera most frequently staged abroad was presented by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE), the Arnold Schonberg Chor and a first-class international ensemble of soloists without a single Czech singer, and what's more in Emanuel Zungel's literally authentic translation which, although made in 1869 upon Smetana's commission, hasn't been heard on stages in the German-speaking world since being replaced by newer translations by Max Kalbeck, Kurt Honolka and Walter Felsenstein.

Gotz, Harry and the rest should be reminded that even their mentor, Walter Felsenstein, once said, "We must reject any interpretation whose primary aim is to produce an interesting performance but which does not carefully explore the intentions of the composer and the author and try to fulfill them as closely as possible.

There are insights and case histories in this book that might give ammunition to both sides, though at root, the nine essays support the credo of the great German director Walter Felsenstein, who wrote, "The first and most important stage director is the composer.

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